Fallbrook schools working on literacy

FALLBROOK -- Nearly 30 percent of the students in the Fallbrook
Union High School District struggle to read English, despite
reading assistance programs long-offered by the Fallbrook Union
Elementary School District, officials say.

To deal with the problem, educators plan on launching new
reading and writing programs in the new semester starting Jan. 26
at Fallbrook High and the two alternative high schools, Ivy and
Oasis.

Students hailing from the area elementary schools have had the
benefit of after-school literacy programs, but still, the rate of
students with reading and writing programs concerns district
officials.

As many as 900 of the 3,000 high school students read at levels
as much as three grades below their current class level based on
2002 California Content Standards test results, a
federally-mandated test to gauge how students are performing in
language arts, the high school district says.

San Diego County Office of Education officials are working with
Fallbrook high administrators to train teachers to implement a
program called RISE -- Reading in Secondary Education. The program
provides teachers with a variety of strategies for one-on-one
sessions and during class to increase students' reading and writing
abilities.

"I think what we're looking to do here is not to conquer the
entire mountain at once, we're going to have to start small," said
Fallbrook High School Principal Ruth Hellams. "This literacy
program can be used schoolwide, even for students with great
reading skills. Classes designed for individual attention might
start just with freshmen and sophomores."

The California State Consortium for Adult Education estimates
that 60 percent of high school dropouts read below a fifth-grade
level. Fallbrook High's dropout rate last year was 1.88 percent, or
58 students, said Jim Yahr, assistant superintendent of educational
services.

Yahr said no particular ethnic group comprises the majority of
those with reading problems. He also said some students may not
have taken the reading test seriously and students targeted in the
new program will be re-tested.

"Almost 200 freshmen (of 795 tested) were below basic or far
below basic in the California Content Standards test, and that's
not just English-learners because we don't have that many," Yahr
said.

Reading and secondary education

The literacy program applies "reading strategies" to every
subject by equipping teachers with ways of addressing reading
problems on a daily basis.

Students struggling the most will be offered specialized reading
classes. The district also will offer an intensive after-school
writing class.

Jane Meyers, the county language arts coordinator working to
implement the new literacy program, said Fallbrook High's program
would be the first in the county to fully implement the RISE
program.

"There are nine models (of teaching strategies)," Meyers said of
the reading program and citing some examples. "For English
learners, it talks to the teachers about the needs for those
students and what strategies works well. There's an intensive
reader model. There's a model for students that are far below the
reading level. The idea is to improve reading skills across the
curriculum to make it succeed throughout the day."

Part of the district's urgency to help underperforming readers
comes from the need to comply with a federal law designed to close
the achievement gap.

Last year, the high school did not meet the math and English
requirements set for the first year of testing for the "No Child
Left Behind" Act, President Bush's education initiative which
requires schools meet certain achievement standards.

The tougher accountability requires all elementary and high
school students test at or above their grade level in English
language arts and math. Under the act, all students will be
expected to be proficient in the subjects by 2014 or schools that
accept federal funding could face sanctions.

Principal Hellams said she believes the techniques emphasized in
the new reading program can help improve math scores as well as
English.

"There's a language of mathematics; there's a whole separate
terminology," she said. "In RISE, there are professional
opportunities to teach them to work with language in any subject.
It's not unconquerable."

Before high school

While high school officials plan on improving students' reading
and writing abilities, some educators say a child shows signs of
potentially lifelong reading problems in elementary school.

"If a student has not mastered reading by the third grade, they
aren't going to be good readers," said Connie Fish, assistant
superintendent of education services for the Fallbrook Union
Elementary School District.

More than 6,000 students attend that district's nine elementary
and middle schools in Fallbrook and on Camp Pendleton. Of those
students, nearly 2,000 are learning English as a second language,
which is about 30 percent of the population.

The rate of those students achieving fluency in English is low.
About 26 percent, or 200 students, were considered proficient after
five years or more in district schools.

Stacey Everson, the elementary district's coordinator of special
projects, said English-learning students whose reading skills don't
reach the eighth-grade level by the time they are headed to high
school will likely not graduate when they should.

The elementary district offers after-school reading programs
starting in kindergarten, tutorial sessions, and summer school to
English and non-English speaking students, Fish said.

This year, the district adopted a language arts curriculum for
first- and second-graders that teaches what students need to know
for the federally mandated testing, Fish said. Buying all the
materials teachers would like to have to improve literacy rates for
kindergarten and sixth- through eighth-grades could cost as much as
$400,000.

But all the expensive educational materials in the world can't
make up for time lost before children ever go to school, Fish said,
adding parents are the key to their child's reading skills.

"Kids who are read to a lot and kids who are spoken to, that's
how kids learn language," Fish said.

To reinforce that belief, the district runs the Parents As
Teachers program for 300 families designed to help parents raise
well-educated children, said lead teacher Kathy Gausepohl.

The program started assisting English-speaking families 14 years
ago and added help for Spanish-speaking families about two years
ago, Gausepohl said.

"We have parents anywhere from lawyers to single moms,"
Gausepohl said. "Most of my children are read to by their parents.
We also encourage parents to read around the house themselves,
which shows children how important it is. It's not enough just to
tell a child to read."

To learn more about literacy problems in California, log on to
the California Literacy Web site at www.caliteracy.org.Contact
staff writer Erica Warren at (760) 731-5798 or
ewarren@nctimes.com.